Stuck In The Mud

At 3 pm in mid-afternoon, Union Gen. George Crook launched a two-pronged attack on the Confederate left flank to break the battlefield stalemate. One of his divisions, under Col. Isaac Duval, moved to attack here, but after charging through a dense thicket and reaching the bank, the troops were halted by the swampy stretch of Red Bud Run. An Ohio officer called it a deep slough twenty or thirty yards wide, nearly waist deep, with soft mud at the bottom and a thick bed of moss on the surface. The front line stopped along the bank and the rear rank quickly stacked behind them, creating turmoil and confusion. Lt. Col. William Enoch of the 5th West Virginia recalled that nobody seemed to be directing the brigade or division. Col. Rutherford B. Hayes then plunged his horse into the morass, quickly became mired in the muddy bottom, jumped off, and on all fours reached the Confederate side alone. Soldiers of the 23rd Ohio struggled across after him, but most of the troops marched upstream with Col. Duval, crossed in front of the Hackwood House, and launched their attack there. As Hayes recalled, Confederate fire then broke out furiously, and although stopping meant death and going on seemed little better, the line started forward again.

Virginia · United States